Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile
A developer's machine accumulates tools fast. A Rust CLI you compiled last year, a Python formatter installed via `uv`, a language server pulled from npm, a terminal emulator from a curl script, a Go binary built from source. Each came from a different package manager, each with its own install incantation you half-remember. I wanted a way to declare what I need without adopting a complex system like Nix or Ansible just for a single laptop. The result was a plain old Makefile. I wrote a short post on using Make (along with a tiny bash script and fzf) to create a searchable, single-command…
Home Maker: Declare Your Dev Tools in a Makefile launched on March 29, 2026 with 91 votes, #523 of 23,380 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Home Maker is a Makefile-based approach for declaring and managing developer tools across multiple package managers. It allows developers to create a searchable, single-command registry for local dev tools—combining Make with a bash script and fzf—without requiring complex systems like Nix or Ansible. The tool is designed for developers who accumulate tools from various sources and want a simpler way to track and install their local environment dependencies.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Your laptop has ripgrep, installed via cargo install. ruff is there too, via uv tool install. golangci-lint came from go install. bash-language-server was npm i -g. Neovim was a tarball download. Kitty was a curl script. Six months later you get a new machine, or you just want to upgrade or reinstall. What do you even have installed? How did you install each one? Which version? Good luck. This is
In the maker’s words, at launch
A developer's machine accumulates tools fast. A Rust CLI you compiled last year, a Python formatter installed via `uv`, a language server pulled from npm, a terminal emulator from a curl script, a Go binary built from source. Each came from a different package manager, each with its own install incantation you…
Does a similar job
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